Assaf Azulay is a former journalist and entrepreneur. During his years as a journalist, he worked in the field of culture, both as a researcher in television programs and as the chief editor of the main cultural radio show of the public radio of Israel. Assaf is the founder of Seshat Publishing House.

Salman Masalha is a bilingual writer, poet and translator. He holds a Ph.D. in classical Arabic literature from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is co-editor of the concordance of classical Arabic poetry at the Institute of Asian and African studies there. He has published eight volumes of poetry as well as essays, stories and poetry translations in journals and anthologies. He was awarded the President’s Prize for Hebrew poetry In recent years he has been a frequent contributor to Haaretz newspaper as well as the international Arabic press.

Rama Ayalon is an Israeli French-to-Hebrew translator. She completed her B.A. in Philosophy and French Literature at Tel-Aviv University and continued her academic studies at Paris Diderot University (Paris 7), researching the work of Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Ayalon has translated more than eighty classic and contemporary works in the fields of philosophy, psychoanalysis and prose. Her philosophical translations include works by Blaise Pascal and Emmanuel Lévinas. Among the authors she has translated are Guy de Maupassant, Marguerite Duras, Robert Antelme, Romain Gary, Milan Kundera, Marie Ndiaye, Michel Houellebecq, Delphine de Vigan and Leïla Slimani. Rama Ayalon won the 2016 Israeli Culture Minister Award for Translation.

Nir Ratzkovsky is a writer, translator and teacher at the MA Program in Culture Studies at the University of Haifa. As a writer he has published the novel Beloved, Daughter (2013) and Lech Lecha (2017), a book for children about great travel stories from the Bible. His translations into Hebrew include many classic and contemporary works of literature, especially from French. Received the Israeli Ministry of Culture Award for Translators in 2015, and at the same year was awarded the title of Chevalier in the Order of the Palmes Académiques by the French government for his translations of French literature. Since 2011 he is also the literary councilor of the Livres sur scènes festival at the Cameri Theatre in Tel-Aviv.

Alon Altaras is a novelist, poet and translator. He is an expert in modern Italian literature and culture. Altaras divides his time between Israel and Italy. Altaras translated Italian literature into Hebrew: Elena Ferrante, Antonio Tabucchi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Eugenio Montale, Antonio Gramsci, Natalia Ginzburg, Primo Levi, Andrea Camilleri, Sandro Veronesi, Alessandro Baricco, Roberto Calasso and Cristina Comencini, among others. He writes for Il Fatto Quotidiano in Italy and Haaretz in Israel. Altaras has been awarded the Prime Minister’s Prize (2001), the Italian Ministry of Education Prize for his translations and for promoting Italian culture in Israel (2003); decorated by the President of Italy as Knight of the Italian Republic for his contribution to promoting Italian literature in Israel (2006), the Dan David Foundation Award (2008) and the Ramat Gan Prize for Translation (2016).

Janan Bsoul is a translator, editor, publicist and literary critic. Janan formerly worked as a labor market reporter for TheMarker and literary reporter for Galleria cultural supplement of Haaretz.

Tal Nitzan is a critically acclaimed poet , novelist and translator, the winner of thirteen literary prizes, among them the Culture Minister Prizes for Beginning Poets and for Debut Book, the Hebrew and Bar-Ilan Universities Poetry Prizes, the Prime Minister's Writers’ Prize. She published seven poetry collections in Hebrew and thirteen in translation, two novels, a short stories collection and six children's books. Nitzan is one of the major literary translators in Israel, having translated from Spanish and English to Hebrew circa 80 books in prose and poetry, among them works by Cervantes, García Lorca, Neruda, Borges, Paz, Cortázar, García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, Fuentes and Bolaño. For her translations she won the Culture Minister Prize for translators, the Award for exemplary translation, and an honorary medal from Chile’s president. She is a founding editor at The Garage, the online literary magazine of the Israeli National Library, and the editor of the ground-breaking anthology, ‘With an Iron Pen’, twenty years of Hebrew protest poetry, translated and published in the U.S.A, in France and in Spain. Photo: Bar Gordon